Tim Drake's 16th Birthday - Tumblr Posts
Sometimes I think about Tim having trust issues after Bruce's 16th birthday gift fiasco, just him wanting so hard to trust in his family, but never being fully able to do so.
Imagine Tim sitting at the table during dinner suddenly wondering if maybe Alfred poisoned his food because maybe today, Bruce decided he wanted to test Tim's tolerance to them. Or Tim chucking a gift from Bruce into his closet just in case it's another doomsday message. Tim adding stuff into his family and friends' schedules on his birthday so everyone will be too busy to remember and he can pretend it's just another normal day. Tim preparing for the worst case scenario in every mission and patrol, surprised every time someone backs him up or comes to help him because he was genuinely not expecting it.
The Birthday Comics (Tim’s Less Than Sweet 16th Birthday)
This is simply a (less in-depth) exploration into Robin (1993) Issues 116-120 for those curious. (I tried to be as direct as possible).
Issue 116 starts at the “conclusion” of another case that Tim had been working on. Due to his time spent on the case, he is less than aware of the timeline and namely that his 16th birthday is just around the corner (the coming Thursday (19th of July)).
Upon realizing that Tim is unaware that his 16th birthday is coming up, Dana (Tim’s father’s partner and icon of a woman), decides to have essentially a surprise party for Tim.
During this party, as the gifts are being ripped into it is established that a gift of unknown origin (a box) was delivered to Tim’s place earlier that morning (it was addressed to Tim Drake).
Tim contacts Batman about the mystery gift as he is unsure what it is and suspects that it may be from an enemy who has put together that Tim Drake=Robin. Batman and Tim analyze the box and find finger prints belonging to a man named Draygo Balacki aka Yak Black. Yak Black is a henchman utilized by several other criminals within Gotham. He is strong; he is not smart.
To find information about Yak Black, Tim interrogates Harvey Dent while Batman interrogates the Penguin (both former employers of Yak Black). Batman contacts Tim during his interrogation with Dent and says Penguin has given him all the info they need and to meet at Yak’s place.
When running across Gotham rooftops to rendezvous with Batman, following their separate interrogations, the mystery box opens up and attaches wires to Tim’s face showing him a holographic Future Alfred.
Future Alfred talks in a creaky, tired, and desperate voice that is not as familiar as the normal Alfred tone that Tim is used to. Along with that, his right hand is no longer flesh.
Firstly, Future Alfred tells Tim that Yak Black was indeed the man who delivered the box, but that he would have slim to no recollection of doing so. Yak was acting on thought commands sent back in time from Future Alfred and Yak himself is not intelligent enough to have created the box. Secondly, Alfred tells Tim about the future of Gotham.
Essentially, someone, a friend of Tim’s, tried to rid Gotham of it’s corruption and in trying to do so became corrupt themselves (sacrificing too much for order). This friend was the catalyst to a war-ridden future Gotham wherein a group of heroes are at conflict with the government and state bodies over who “owns” Gotham/how to counteract crime.
Future Alfred says it is up to Tim to prevent this from happening–he must stop the catalyst before it is too late. However, before Alfred can name the person who started everything, he is struck down.
Of course, Tim does not believe all of this right away as there is too much going on at play. That being said, Tim does not tell Bruce (or anyone else for that matter) about Future Alfred–even when Batman implores into why Tim is starting to act strange and why he was late meeting up at Yak’s place (Batman takes Yak to the Batcave for questioning).
Tim flips between slight belief and complete disbelief eventually arriving to the conclusion that the holograph and the box were simply a trick–and he has suspicions as to who could be behind the trick. Tim suspects a man named Jaeger (an unethical monster hunter that Tim has fought with in the past) is extracting his revenge. However, this is quickly proven false after Tim’s investigation establishes that Jaeger is serving time in prison.
Following this, Batman contacts Tim with an update involving Yak. Batman interrogated Yak through various methods, one such method being “hypnotizing and regressing him [Yak] while hooked up to the Neuro-ontoscope”. The Neuro-ontoscope was a new device in the Bat cave that produced video and audio directly from a subject’s brain–their thoughts, memories, etc. Yak’s state of mind is nearly all blank, minus an audio that Tim recognizes as the voice of Future Alfred.
Tim is now starting to think that the Hologram was real and not a fake.
Tim heads to the Batcave only to find Yak running free within it. The two get into a fight and as a result the Neuro-ontoscope is crashed into and broken.
Tim now starts to critically look at everyone (hero-wise) he knows that could possibly be the catalyst for a war-ridden future Gotham… everyone–no exceptions. He starts to look at friends and family–desperately trying to piece together who could possibly be the one to “snap”.
Tim then comes up with a plan to talk to each person he thinks could turn (which was any of them). This plan involved showing each person the stepping stones that would led to the creation of a “better” Gotham– a more controlled Gotham.
Essentially Tim was going to go up to them and say “hey, we should take over Gotham and be the only voice of justice seeing as the state and police can not handle it.” This plan was meant to work as a way of getting one of the individuals to show their true colors by not being so harsh in rejecting it or by agreeing with Tim to any extent.
However, on his way to implement the plan, another Holographic Future Alfred shows up, but wait–this one Tim can touch?? And unlike the first Future Alfred, this Alfred has lost the left arm–not his right arm.
There’s more off to this Alfred as well. It smells weird–of ozone fainter and… latex? Tim snaps and rips off the mask of the man pretending to be Future Alfred to reveal:
Alfred?
Following this, it is revealed that the whole thing was part of a training module made by Batman.
After hearing such, Tim snapped. He says he’s down and expresses that he was on the verge of a breakdown as he felt he could no longer trust anyone.
Towards the end of the 120, Steph paints the situation in a slightly different light. She points out the differences between the test Batman put her through and the test he put Tim through–mentioning that Batman believed Tim had the potential, and was ready to, become more.
This slightly frightened Tim.
But not enough to prevent him from picking back up the mantle.
But I'm so tired. The fight... I hate that I know how to take down my family. I hate that it's something I've thought about before.
From Tim Drake: Robin #3
And beneath the cut, two other times Tim thought of his family as people he might need to take down, aka one of my favourite aspects of his character.
In Robin #117, while celebrating his 16th birthday, Tim gets a message from future!Alfred about one of their friends destroying Gotham:
Tim then spends some quality time stalking his friends, thinking up worst case scenarios:
From Robin #120
Of course it turns out this was all Bruce's idea of a training exercise, which Tim takes super well:
From Robin #120
He realizes the real problem is that Bruce is asking him to enter a headspace that scares the hell out of him, but ultimately, that's not enough to get him to stop being Robin:
From Robin #120
Time passes and, in Red Robin #14, we see Tim's gotten a lot more comfortable with this particular headspace of making plans to take down his family should the need arise:
He might hate this part of himself, but that's not gonna stop him from being prepared:
From Tim Drake: Robin #3
Bruce sets up an elaborate mindfuck for Tim's birthday in an attempt to make Tim less trusting of even allies, giving him a mental breakdown. Bruce claims this will make Tim a better vigilante.
Tim, upon figuring it out, throws his Robin uniform literally in Bruce's face, cussing him out (like, actually censored swears, which Tim usually doesn't use), and quits. He talks with Steph about how messed up it was, and she empathizes out of her own messed up experiences with Bruce.
An unclear but short time later, probably a few days, Tim un-quits and states to Bruce that he doesn't expect an apology (not because it's unnecessary, but because he knows Bruce).
~
Stephanie returns from presumed death, finds Bruce, and accepts his orders to not reveal herself to everyone else & to take extreme actions to, once again in Bruce's estimate, make Tim a better vigilante.
This includes running around town in her original costume so Tim thinks his dead friend has a copycat, hiring people to attack him, working with a bomber, and even after knocking all that off, not sharing pertinent information about it with Tim, resulting in Tim being caught in an explosion.
Tim yells at Stephanie and says "Don't let me catch you wearing [the Spoiler] costume ever again." When she tracks him down a little later, he refuses to speak with her.
An unclear amount of time later, probably a few months, Tim is willing to work with Stephanie to stop a supervillain plot.
~
Some fans treat Tim's word-choice in the confrontation with Steph as him trying to control her. As him thinking he's got the authority to decide who can and cannot operate as a vigilante, at least in Gotham.
But. Like. One, aside from this one conversation, he takes no actions to stop her. He doesn't steal her gear (like Bruce sometimes steals people's uniform), he doesn't go and tell other people to stop working with her, he doesn't even go snitch to her mom.
Tim just. Tells the friend who got him very badly hurt while mindfucking him that he doesn't want to see her in the field again.
Two, it's a pretty dang similar response to when Bruce mindfucked him in the first example. Tim is the one who insists Batman needs a Robin. And here he is depriving Batman of Robin.
Yet if I tried to claim "Tim quitting Robin is his attempt to control Batman, is Tim acting like he has authority to stop Bruce from being a vigilante" you'd laugh in my face. Because that is a huge leap to make, with convoluted logic, and isn't supported by the rest of the text.
Bruce & Stephanie both screw Tim up really badly.
He confronts them and says he's breaking ties.
Then after a little distance, he goes right back to working with them.
And some people think this is...controlling? Don't get me wrong, Tim has some controlling tendencies, they all do, but it's usually teaming up with Alfred to stop Bruce patrolling while injured, and lying his ass off to everyone so he can do what he wants.
This? Is not that.
So much of the robins' "training" is literally just abuse and I'm using Tim's birthday to prove my point
So on Tim's 16th birthday got a box from a "mysterious stranger" (a paid actor) that couldn't be opened and he thought it was a bomb so he immediately tried to get it as far away from his family as he could.
When the box opened it played a holographic video of Alfred (who Tim should be able to trust) sending a message back in time from the near future telling him someone he was close to would betray them and that it was up to Tim to stop it happening.
So Timmy was under loads of pressure, had a nervous breakdown and stopped trusting everyone from his friends to his girlfriend and brother. He spends several days and nights spying on his allies waiting for someone to slip up.
Eventually he figures out Bruce is behind it all and goes to find him. Bruce didn't care Tim was upset and congratulated him for "passing the test" (and also tells him he should've done better). Tim, understandably, yells at him and nearly quits being robin for good (he later comes back for another fucked up thing Bruce does but that's another thing).
It's not psychological abuse, it's ✨training✨
(also I'm so glad Tim yelled at him and didn't just accept it because he's right, it isn't okay)
Bernard would absolutely not agree to that, he'd go throw hands with batsy immediately.
Bernard: hey watchu want for your birthday?
Tim: oh I don’t really do presents anymore
Bernard: oh, why not?
Tim: …okay first you gotta promise me you won’t get yourself injured trying to fight Batman-